I seem to be running through about one mahjong title per day – this is pretty easy when you’re working on games that have, at most, four opponents. Finished Super Real Mahjong PIV off of the Saturn “Graffiti” compilation disc tonight.

The ending credits seemed to be really short. I’m not sure if that’s because they changed the ending for the home release or for the compilation disc or just because older mahjong games really were made with very few people. I’m guessing it’s the last one, there.

Just to be sure, though, I went looking for a FAQ. I couldn’t find one. What I DID find was a blog post – not in itself particularly racy, but the site it’s on is probably NSFW depending on how strict your IT department is – detailing the short and sordid history of Japan’s “red label” games, those sold with a 18-and-up-only logo.

Here’s an example:

This was replaced with the slightly more restrictive yellow-label rating, like here:

Mind you, calling even the red label games “sordid” is overstating the issue a bit. They may feature animated jubblies, but they’re only shocking in context; they’re naughty for console games at the time, but I think that “D2”, which was a general-release game from only five years later, actually had more nudity and a less imposing rating.

Put another way: the “Tenchi Muyo” game released for the Saturn actually managed to land itself a red label. Yes, a licensed anime game based on a romantic comedy.

Anyway, back to the title of this post.

If I am to believe the blog posting I linked to, there were 24 games released with this rating, and I own only 9 of them.

I could be MUCH worse.

Update: Just in case Canned Dogs goes away, I figured I would mirror their list here so this whole post makes sense: